Sekou Charles & Colin Robinson – “Riding Boundaries” – Short Film and Poem (Trinidad and Tobago)

A powerful collaboration between Sekou Charles and Colin Robinson, “Riding Boundaries” represents same-sex desire, youth, and memory. The film and poem work beautifully together, weaving emotions of passion and longing while expressing untold and silenced desire. 

Sekou Charles and Colin Robinson – Riding Boundaries

Colin Robinson is 50, lonely, and has done a certain amount of shit. Nah, Colin Robinson is trying to build a thinking Caribbean queer political movement. Hmm… Colin Robinson is a Trini who has lived transnationally, legally and illegally. He is currently executive director of CAISO, an NGO doing sexual citizenship, gender justice and nation-building advocacy in Trinidad and Tobago; and spearheading the development of the Caribbean Forum for Liberation and Acceptance of Genders and Sexualities as a regional network. His work includes writing, HIV, migration, management; and has been done through the Audre Lorde Project, the Caribbean IRN, Gay Men of African Descent, GMHC, IGLHRC, the NY State Black Gay Network, Other Countries, Think Again, and Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied. Steups. Colin Robinson is a poet

Lawrence Graham-Brown – “10 Minutes Into The Honeymoon” – Performance Art – Video with Artist Statement (Jamaica / United States)

Artist Statement

“Ten Minutes Into The Honeymoon” drawn from my memory of the beating of a Gay man in Kingston, Jamaica WI. As he was being beaten, he called on the Christian Bible for help. And as his violators beat him, they too called on the Christian Bible for his destruction while quoting scriptures. Coupled with the signing of the same sex marriage bill into law by Gov. Cuomo of New York in June 24, 2011, I created “Ten Minutes  Into the Honeymoon” as a liturgy where a union of love triumphs over fear, ostracism, disparagement, hate, et al.

Ten Minutes Into the Honeymoon by Lawrence Graham-Brown

Lawrence Graham-Brown

(Born and raised in Jamaica, self educated, lives and works in NY & NJ) Is a cross-disciplinary artist who works in sculpture, painting, performance, among other media. Graham-Brown uses his work as a palliative gesture to dispel the trauma and shame to which people of color and Gay people are routinely subjected. His work has been presented at: The Queens Museum of Art; El Museo del Barrio NY; Leslie Lohman Gay and Lesbian Museum; Institute of Jamaica, Museum of Ethnography; The National Gallery of Jamaica, WI; Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance NY; Aljira Center for Contemporary Art;  One of thirty artists to represent USA in the 2008 Shanghai Biennial in China; Galleria Homero Massena, Victoria, Brazil; Galerie Lutz Rohs, Duren, Germany; New York University, Grey Gallery; Creative Art Center, University of The West Indies, Jamaica; The streets of New York City among other places. His work has been written about in print by: The New York Times, Hartford Courant, Yankee Magazine, Hartford Advocate, Out in NJ, CAW Magazine, Jamaica Gleaner, In his catalog: Disconnecting, Reconnecting…Disconnected by Dean Daderko, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, published by Aljira Center for Contemporary Arts, among other periodicals and blogs and appeared on BET TV and online by: The Queens Museum TV, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art TV, BAAD TV, Real Art Ways TV, Dixon Place Theater TV among others. Lawrence has been the recipient of the Juror’s Award and Prize at NYU Small Works International Exhibition and is currently a Franklin Furnace Fellow for Avant-Garde performance art for 2011-2012.

Scene from “The Needle” A Documentary by Carmen Oquendo-Villar (Puerto Rico)

The documentary centers on an underground beauty clinic in Puerto Rico, where men and women receive silicone, botox and other treatments, as well as share advice, ideas and support each other. Central to the film are a group of transgender sex workers, many of whom hope to use their work to fund their transitioning surgery.

Scene from “The Needle” A Documentary by Carmen Oquendo-Villar